Don't Bring Your Parents into Math
by aaquater
Summary: When Annabeth Chase's daughter comes home from school in a bad mood, you know something has to be terribly wrong.


_Hello!_

_This is an idea that has been in my mind for quite some time, but until now, I couldn't figure out how to put it into words. I've got so many positive reviews on The Essay, and also some pleads to continue, so I thought I could look more into this incorporating-gods-in-school stuff, and this is what I came up with. I hope you'll like it._

_Disclaimer: If I was Rick Riordan and owned PJatO and HoO, would I really be going out of my mind from the cliffhanger in Mark of Athena?_

_Oh, and to clear any confusion, Zoe is eight years old in the story. Please, ignore it if some questions are too difficult for eight-year-olds._

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The moment when Zoe Silena Jackson arrived home from school, Annabeth knew something was wrong.

If not from the silent closing of the front door - normally, Zoe never paid any attention to the door when she arrived; she just let it slam - then from the angry, depressed, if not slightly fearful look in her eyes when she greeted her mom. She might've inherited Annabeth's brains, but in terms of behavior, she was much more like Percy. To see her like that, so quiet and... Nico-like, wasn't something Annabeth was used to.

Zoe strolled to her room, threw her school bag on the ground and sat on her bed, hugging her knees.

Annabeth saw all of this. She wondered what could've made her daughter so depressed; she hadn't come from school in such a bad mood before. Knowing from experience that keeping the anger bottled up inside wasn't helpful, she stepped into Zoe's room and sat beside her on the bed.

"Zoe? Is something wrong?" Annabeth asked gently.

"No," Zoe muttered into the sleeve of her pullover.

"But I see that something's happened, and you feel bad about it," Annabeth pressed. "Let it out, sweetie. You'll feel better."

Zoe lowered her eyes. "You'll get angry at me if I tell you."

Annabeth hugged her daughter to her. "I won't, I promise."

"You get angry at Dad all the time, for the smallest things."

"Dad makes me angry on purpose," Annabeth replied. "And besides, I'm never angry at him for a long time, am I?"

"No," Zoe admitted.

"So? What's the matter?"

"I - I..." Zoe took a deep, shaky breath. "I got an F on the Math exam," she burst out.

Annabeth felt relieved. The whole thing had been just because of a bad mark? From Zoe's behavior, she'd been imagining far worse things, like bullying, expulsion or getting stolen from.

"That's alright," Annabeth said soothingly. "Believe me; it has to happen once to everyone. I had got some F-s myself, and don't get me started on Dad."

"But I got everything right!" Zoe cried out in frustration. "And you and Dad have dyslexia."

'Oh. That's the problem,' Annabeth realized. 'She's thinking she was marked unfairly.'

"Do you have the exam here so I could have a look?" Annabeth asked.

Zoe nodded, jumped down from the bed and opened her school bag. While she was searching for the exam, Annabeth noticed something unusual in the bag.

"I'm really curious about what is a box of Scrabble doing in your school bag," Annabeth commented.

"Um..." Zoe said, blushing. "We play it during breaks."

'Just like Percy, I swear,' Annabeth thought, shaking her head fondly. 'He, too, always had a bunch of random things that had nothing to do with school in his school bag.'

"I've always thought that during breaks, you're supposed to prepare for the next lesson, but it seems like I'm too old-fashioned."

"You haven't been in our classroom during a break, Mom. It's impossible to concentrate there. Oh, here it is," Zoe pulled out a piece of paper from the school bag and handed it to Annabeth.

Noticing the state the paper was in, Annabeth frowned. "It looks like a cow has chewed it, then spat it out and stomped on it."

Zoe smiled sheepishly. "I might've been a bit angry..."

Annabeth only shook her head. "Your Math teacher is Ms. Chandler, right?"

"Yup. The one that had called me Zoo at the beginning."

Annabeth smiled a little, remembering the situation from one year ago, when she'd come for her daughter to pick her up from school, and one of her classmates said, "Bye, Zoo!" Fortunately, Zoe had taken it with humor.

Skimming over the exam, Annabeth immediately noticed that next to every single question, there was a big, red question mark, and she raised her eyebrows. 'Just what did Zoe write?'

Annabeth was just about to read the exam line after line, when the front door opened and Percy Jackson came home from work. He took his shoes off and stepped into the flat.

"Hello," Percy said, kissing Annabeth on the cheek. "How… Is everything alright?" he asked.

"Your daughter has just got her first F, and we want to find out why," Annabeth said.

"Phew, it was about time. I was starting to think you weren't my kid," Percy grinned.

"Dad!" Zoe yelled indignantly.

"What, aren't I allowed to joke?" Percy asked before going to wash his hands.

"Real nice, Seaweed Brain; encourage your child to have bad marks," Annabeth muttered, rolling her eyes.

"So; let's have a look at this," Percy said after he returned from the bathroom. "Wow, that's a lot of question marks."

"That's Ms. Chandler's fault," Zoe said defensively. "I'm sure I answered all of those questions right."

"Let's see…"

**1. You have eight apples and you want to share them with your sister. How many apples would you have?**

_**8**_

"But why, Zoe? How many is eight divided by two?" Annabeth asked.

"Four, but I don't have a sister, so I could keep all eight."

"Good logic," Percy grinned.

"Yeah, but in an exam, you can't think like that. In the question, it was said that you had a sister, so you should've counted like you had one," Annabeth said.

"But it said I! I'm not going to let an exam decide about my life," Zoe pouted.

"By Athena, why are you so like your father?" Annabeth groaned.

**2. You tell a joke to your two friends. On the next they, both of them tell it to two of their friends and so on. How long would it take until every person in your class (not counting the teacher) heard the joke?**

_**1 day**_

"Aren't there 31 children in your class?" Annabeth asked.

"Yup, but if I had to choose two of my friends, I'd choose Bridget and Aimée, and if Bridget told the joke to two other people, the whole class would hear."

"Zoe," Annabeth groaned.

"No, she's right," Percy said. "That's how the question is asked. If it was asked differently, then the answer would be five days."

"Four, Percy."

"Whatever. What I'm trying to say is that this wasn't a wrong answer."

"That's what I tried to tell Ms. Chandler right away, but she didn't listen," Zoe complained.

"Wait; is this how you answered all of the questions?" Annabeth asked.

"Yeah, 'cause that's how all of the questions were asked."

"Zoe," Annabeth sighed. "There's a time and place for being smart, and it's not at school."

"Yeah; just imagine that the teachers are like Mr. D; even if they're wrong, you have to act like they're right," Percy said.

"So I should imagine my teachers like fat, lazy and grumpy drunkards?" Zoe asked cheekily.

"Well, if you don't call them that to their face…"

"Percy!" Annabeth hit him.

"Okay, let's read some more pieces of wisdom," Percy suggested.

**3. It takes five hours to your parents to get a job done. How long would it take to your mother alone?**

_**2 hours**_

Annabeth snorted. "That sounds about right."

"Hey," Percy pouted. "I can be helpful."

"Rarely. Most of the time, all you do is distract me," Annabeth stuck her tongue out at Percy.

'Sometimes I wonder who really is the adult here,' Zoe thought.

**4. Your father went scuba-diving. He sailed two miles out to the open sea, perpendicular to the shore. Unfortunately, his compass was faulty; it said that it was west, where it actually was south-west. If we think that the shore was perfectly straight, how far from home did he disembark?**

_**300 feet**_

"How did you get that number?" Annabeth asked, puzzled.

"Well, Dad wouldn't need a compass, and we live 300 feet from the beach, don't we?" Zoe answered like it should've been obvious.

"That's my girl," Percy ruffled Zoe's hair.

"Dad, don't," Zoe groaned, pushing Percy's hand away and smothering her hair.

**5. You're trying to lose weight. If you lose forty pounds, you'd weigh two pounds less than if you lose one quarter of your weight. What is your current weight?**

_**48 pounds**_

"Another correct answer," Percy chuckled.

"Exactly! The whole first part of the question is completely unrealistic. I mean; what would I become if I lost forty pounds?"

"You'd become 1-D. You would only have height," Percy snickered.

Annabeth only shook her head at the two.

**6. On every dinner party in your family, twenty-seven cans of coke are drunk. Two hundred cans fit into one rubbish bin. There are three rubbish bins next to your house. If the dustmen don't want the bins to become overfilled, at least how often do they have to come to empty them?**

_**Never**_

"What, if there were any spare cans on our dinner party, Grover would eat them," Zoe said.

"True," Percy said. "Good old Grover; Scrap Processing, inc."

**7. A five hundred feet tall house and a thousand and two hundred feet tall church stand next to each other. Your uncle is standing in front of the house. At least how far from the house does he have to be to be able to see the top of the church?**

_**Doesn't matter**_

"Doesn't matter?" Annabeth raised an eyebrow.

"Well, Jason is also my uncle… kinda, isn't he? He can fly, so he doesn't have to be far from the house; he just needs to hover high enough."

"...That's true," Annabeth admitted.

"I really wonder what went on through the teacher's head when she read those answers," Percy mused.

"That would be interesting to know," Zoe grinned.

**8. Your friend's password consists of six characters. Two of them are numbers, the rest are letters. You know that the password doesn't begin with a number. How many times at most do you have to try until you successfully log in? (You don't forget which password you've already tried and which you haven't.)**

_**2**_

Percy blinked. "Two? I'd say it's a bit more. Well, let's hear the explanation."

"I know Bridget's password, but it has a 'z' in it, and for some reason, she sometimes uses a QWERTY keyboard, and sometimes QWERTZ. I really don't know why, but it drives me mad."

"What I'm interested about is why they practically encourage children to hack into their friends' accounts," Annabeth huffed.

"Annabeth, chill; it's just an exam," Percy said.

**9. The power in your aunt's house has gone off. She desperately needs to use a computer. The nearest internet café is ten miles from her house. It's four PM at the moment. When is she going to arrive there, if two thirds of the road are on a highway, and the remaining one third in a city?**

_**Never**_

Percy barked a laugh in disbelief. "Seriously? It's like those questions have been made on purpose."

"Yeah," Zoe agreed. "Why would Aunt Thalia, of all people, be bothered if the power went off?"

"Why are all of those questions like that, anyway?" Annabeth asked. "There are always some particular people."

"Ms. Chandler says that it would help us to imagine the situation better," Zoe shrugged. "Oh, look; only one question is left."

**10. Your mother has six t-shirts, five dresses, three pairs of pants and five pairs of jeans. How many parties could she attend without wearing the same outfit for two parties?**

_**3**_

"No offence, Mom, but you only have three different outfits for parties – the green dress, the white dress and the Camp t-shirt with some pants," Zoe said.

"None taken; it's true," Annabeth smiled.

'Aphrodite would have a fit if she heard this,' Zoe thought.

"I wonder… did your teacher consider a dress with a t-shirt as a possible answer?" Percy asked.

Annabeth put her head in her hands. "Seaweed Brain; who wears a t-shirt on a dress? The dress was only put there to confuse them."

"That's unfair; what if someone didn't know that you aren't supposed to wear it like that?"

"And who wouldn't?" Zoe asked. "That would be like wearing pants on a skirt; totally stupid."

"I think wearing pants on a skirt is worse; that would also be uncomfortable," Percy contemplated.

Annabeth was close to facepalming. 'Are you really arguing about that?'

After a moment of silence, Zoe said nervously, "So… about the F…"

"It's not the end of the world," Percy waved his hand. "And, it was funny."

"You think so?"

"Yeah, I do. Just… maybe next time, you should answer what the teacher wants you to answer, no matter if it's right or wrong. Now… I'm sorry, but I've got to call someone," Percy said and walked away.

"Mom?"

"I think Dad's said it all, dear. And don't forget; you can't count your family as a regular one. Maybe other children, from mortal families, would answer correctly even using the same principle as you did. Well, on most questions. But not every family has people who can fly or manipulate the elements, right?"

"Yes, Mom," Zoe smiled.

Meanwhile…

"Hello? Am I speaking to Ms. Chandler?"

And ever since then, Ms. Chandler has made the effort to write on Zoe Jackson's every single exam a little note: 'Don't bring your parents into Math!'

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_Remember; reviews are always welcomed! :)_


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